Web Log File Analysis on your PC: an easy
approach

- Overview -

You are responsible for a website ?
If so you should be interested in a measure of your success. This is possible
by analysing the Web Server's logfiles.

You do not have any (technical) experience in doing this ?
The following presents a free method to perform a logfile analysis on your PC
investing only small effort.

Assumption: Your Webspace-Provider enables the logfiles for a FTP
download, probably in a compressed format.

Three possibilities to analyse the logfiles are common thru' the different
ISPs:

You use a specific program offered by the ISP.
In Germany, one of the largest providers, Strato, offers the programm DalaSTAT
Pro (http://www.dalastat.de).

You use statistics offered by your ISP.

You download the logfiles to your PC and manipulate them using freeware,
shareware oder a commercial program.

If you are not satisfied by one of these solutions, you're qualified and
welcomed to check the following!
If you have already downloaded logfiles on your PC you can continue to use
them.

Please pay attention: if you already use a
program to download the logfiles, which checks date and time of the last
downloaded logfile, and set the period for the new download, you should
continue to use this. Otherwise the logfiles may overlap so that the accesses
may counted twice. Analog recognizes this and will warn you - but will
duplicate some entries!

How does the statistics look-a-like ?
See these examples:

You will need the following programs:

1. a FTP programm

to download the logfiles from the server of your ISP to your PC.

2. gzip

to unpack compressed logfiles.

3. Analog

to analyse the logfiles. It's possible to read compressed data.

4. ReportMagic

to prepare nice graphics.

Details:

FTP Programm
I assume that every webmaster possesses already a suited program. If not: I
recommend WS-FTP, you can find at http://www.wsftp.com.

gzip
A widely used program to compress and unpack data. The compressionrate is
greater 90% for logfiles! You will find it at http://www.gzip.org (please use the windows version you'll
find under »Executables« (supports long filenames!).

Report
Magic
If you do not like the Analog-look-a-like you may want to use ReportMagic to
enhance the output. You will find a lot of sites using and publishing this
statistics. Everything related to ReportMagic you will find at
http://www.reportmagic.org.